


Delirium

by diversionary_tactician



Category: Torchwood
Genre: Alcohol, Angst, Canon Compliant, Canonical Character Death, Character Study, Children of Earth, Delirium, Drug Abuse, Drug Use, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Hallucinations, Hurt/Comfort, Mental Breakdown, Recreational Drug Use
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-03-12
Updated: 2014-03-12
Packaged: 2018-01-15 13:01:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,163
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1305748
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/diversionary_tactician/pseuds/diversionary_tactician
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After the events of Children of Earth, Jack’s grief manifests in the form of an old friend.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Delirium

**Author's Note:**

> Disclaimer: I write for my own entertainment and education, and derive no financial benefit. I imagine that BBC owns the copyrights and trademarks for Torchwood. I do not hold any copyrights or trademarks associated with Torchwood or the characters, setting, or story lines depicted therein. However, I imagine those that do would appreciate your patronage.

Delirium was closing in around the edges. It wasn’t the light drift of a pleasant high, however. It was the rocky, nauseating, lilt of a world gone off its axis. He could smell Shanghai on his clothing, seeping into the floor from below. This was a 21st century trip - meaning even the illicit drugs were inferior - and the memory breaking through made the room rock again. Perhaps this wasn’t even the drugs; maybe it was merely the madness that came with grief and exhaustion.

“You look a mess, mate,” Jack heard in an impossible voice. Jack first realized that he was sitting on a floor, legs pulled into his chest and arms wrapped around them like a hiding child. He looked up from trainers to lab coat to smug face. There Owen was, standing right in front of him as though he hadn’t dissolved in a bath of toxic chemicals. Owen walked over to the minibar and started pilfering tiny little shots of alcohol out of the broken, moldy mini-fridge. Jack pressed his forehead into his knees and stifled the miserable sob trying to pass his throat. He told himself it wasn’t real, but that didn’t help considering he could hear the sounds of plastic caps being liberated from bottles and liquor being swallowed in generous gulps. It was going to cost Jack 25 renmibi per double shot. He didn’t care in earnest but he didn’t know how else to address the specter.

“You’re an expensive nervous breakdown,” Jack said, hating the petulant sound in his voice, and thankful that the real Owen wasn’t here to see him in such a miserable and pathetic state. The hallucination laughed at him, - snide but good-natured, Owen’s laugh - and shrugged, popping open another bottle and downing it in one go. “Indulge me,” he said in a cavalier fashion “it’s been a while.” Jack clamped down hard on another wave of grief. The circumstances of Owen’s death came back over him like a bought of illness – remembering the team he’d failed, each and every one of them, of Ianto who he adored and never even told. Whatever way Owen was about to tear into him, Jack deserved it tenfold.

“Why you? Why not him?” Jack asked, feeling the moisture on his knees like defeat, and looking up at Owen regardless. He knew he wouldn’t need to elaborate for Owen. It was puzzling that Owen would come to him rather than Ianto, who had as much cause to haunt him and the potential to do infinitely more harm. He expected a flip answer, reminding him that Owen was _his_ hallucination so Jack should know best. 

Instead Owen seemed to consider a long moment. “I expect you think I’ll be brutal with you,” Owen concluded. He said nothing more and seemed to have no particular opinion on the matter one way or another. He picked up the remote and began flipping through the channels, thankfully the specter seemed to be in the mood for violence as opposed to pornography and Jack thanked his lucky stars for that. Knowing Owen, it could have been one just as easily as the other.

“So would he.” Jack answered, his voice barely above a whisper, aware of how truly bizarre it was to be holding a conversation with his subconscious personified. 

“Look I’m sorry to disappoint” Owen replied sardonically, finally seeming irked at Jack’s stubborn expectation that he was going to get a dead ex-colleague that he liked better. “The mind’s a funny thing though. It only gives you what you can handle. I’m safe. You see me as a brother of sorts, and even when I hurt you, you could always write it off because in the end we usually shook out even. When I died you brought me back. You did everything you could to keep me alive, and you know it, even when it wasn’t in my best interest,” Owen stated, waving his hand dismissively as if they were taking about football or a weevil in Splott. Jack was vaguely aware that a car on the television was flying through the air and exploded with a loud crash. He cringed at the noise, like a man suffering battle fatigue.

Jack hated to admit that he was taking psychological evaluation from a hallucination but Owen’s logic made a certain kind of sense. Owen would berate him without being under his skin too deep. It would be pain, but within manageable limits. Seeing Ianto now would tear him apart completely. Yet Owen hadn’t criticized him yet. In fact, hadn’t said a word against him. “Are you planning to get on with it then, or are you just here to drink all my liquor?” he asked petulantly, his words tinged with a masochistic sort of hope. 

Owen smiled. 

“No, I don’t expect I will, just now. I’ll sit with you until morning though, if you like. You have the look of a man in need of company, and this paperview’s not half bad even if it is all in bloody Mandarin,” Owen suggested casually. With that he sat down on the floor beside Jack and put an arm around Jack’s shoulders. It felt so real that it made Jack’s chest ache. 

“I see him everywhere” Jack admitted miserably into Owen’s collarbone. “However, far I run it doesn’t seem to be far enough.” Owen carded fingers through Jack’s hair, and remained silent for a while.

“It was like that after Katie. I had to leave London to escape the reminders,” he reminded Jack. “Maybe it’s time to go away again, like you did with the blue box. If the world’s too small, mate, it might be time to shake the dust of this place off your boots for a while, yeah? Come back someday. . .don’t. . .at least it would be your choice,” he suggested dispassionately. 

It sounded so good, so seductive, that Jack nearly took to the streets then and there to find a way off world. “But Torchwood. . .Gwen. . .” he argued weakly.

“What about them?” Owen asked, a bit of an edge to his voice “Fat lot of good you’re doing skulking about above a take away and talking to people who you ruddy-well know aren’t there,” Owen snarked at him, not unkind, but direct all the same. “If you can’t handle it here, it’s time to get out, otherwise you’re just a liability.” Again, a fair point. 

“Will I see you again? After tonight, I mean?” Jack asked his voice soft and hoarse, as though he’d been shouting. 

Owen observed him searchingly, wearing the expression he had when one of the team was in the operating theatre getting wounds stitched up. Jack’s fingers fisted in the cheap fabric of his t-shirt and he pulled in closer as the drugs brought on another sickening wave of dizziness. The darkness started to fade as they came on toward dawn. Stroking a thumb across his temple, Owen promised, “I’m always here when you need me.”


End file.
